Angry Birds Lands 30 Million Christmas Week Downloads

App downloads reached record levels on Christmas Day, and it appears a good chunk of those purchases were for Angry Birds. Game maker Rovio announced today that it saw 8 million downloads on Dec. 25 alone.

According to the Rovio blog, the game earned 30 million downloads during the holiday week, from Dec. 22 to 29, with 8 million in 24 hours.

"Wow, what a year!" the team wrote. "We released four critically acclaimed best-selling mobile games, developed two top-rated Facebook games, and reached more than a billion downloads  all before our 3rd 'Birdday'!"

The company also tweeted the news today, garnering a few comments, including one from Mike La Chance, who said that number could have reached more than 8 million if he could download the Star Wars version to the BlackBerry Playbook tablet.

According to Rovio, the company racked up one Angry Birds download for every other new device  which, according to stats from mobile analytics firm Flurry, amounted to 17.4 million activations by the end of Christmas Day.

All of those popular games led the way for the biggest release in Rovio's feathered history. The long, slow process of revealing sneak peeks and teaser trailers eventually led to the Nov. 8 release of Angry Birds Star Wars, complete with flying versions of all of the original characters.

But Rovio wasn't the only company earning big downloads during the holidays. The week of Christmas is marked as the largest ever for new iOS and Android device activations and app downloads, according to Flurry. The record-breaking week concluded with more than 50 million gadgets turned on and 1.76 billion apps downloaded. Separately, Apple saw an 87 percent rise in Christmas Day app downloads.

For a more colorful look at Rovio's success, check out the graphic below. Also check out PCMag's review of Angry Birds Space and the slideshow above.

Stephanie began as a PCMag reporter in May 2012. She moved to New York City from Frederick, Md., where she worked for four years as a multimedia reporter at the second-largest daily newspaper in Maryland. She interned at Baltimore magazine and graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (in the town of Indiana, in the state of Pennsylvania) with a degree in journalism and mass communications.
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